Beat the Band (Swim the Fly #2)(30)

“So, you guys weren’t even playing the same song?” Valerie busts up again. “Now that’s funny.”

“Matt,” I growl through clenched teeth. I feel an angry vein pulsing in my temple. “Can you do something about her?”

Matt gives Valerie a please-honey look. Not really what I had in mind, but there you go.

Valerie waves her hands in the air. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll be quiet.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a travel guide to China. Hopefully, she’s planning on moving there.

“No, no.” Dad gestures with his finger. “Now that explains a lot. And I’ll tell you what. It shows character. You know how many people would have cut the song off? But you guys acted like pros. You played the whole song straight through.”

“Two whole songs.” Valerie looks up from her book and laughs, then pretends to zip up her lips and throw away the key. If only it were that easy.

“The bottom line is,” Dad points at us, “you persevered. That’s the mark of a true professional. Because if you stop in the middle of a song, it sounds bad.”

“Or,” Matt says, “if you just plain blow, it sounds bad.”

“Okay.” Dad gestures at Matt. “Give me that guitar. I’m gonna show you how it’s done.”

Matt lifts his guitar off and hands it to Dad, who looks at it like the pathetic thing it is. Dad slips the strap over his head, does some fine-tuning of the strings, and cranks up all the dials on Matt’s Rocktron Velocity amplifier.

“You guys just started with something too difficult,” Dad says.

The speaker on Matt’s amp buzzes like it’s filled with wasps. The feedback squeaking and squealing.

“Um.” Matt looks concerned. “Isn’t that going to damage the, uhh . . .”

Dad glances back at Matt’s amp. “Nah. These bastards are built like brick shithouses. You could throw it off the roof and it wouldn’t break.”

Dad strikes a pose and hits a power chord with authority.

Matt’s amplifier makes a loud POP!, and smoke starts to billow from the back. He looks over at Valerie, who grimaces.

“Ah, crap,” Dad says. “All right. Don’t worry. I can fix that.” He unplugs Matt’s guitar from the smoking amp and plugs it into the secondary input on Sean’s.

“That’s my Uncle Doug’s amplifier.” Sean gulps. “He said if I break it he’d beat the piss out of me with a tire iron.”

“And well he should,” Dad says. “Because this is a real nice Mesa/Boogie. I don’t even know why the hell he’d loan it to you in the first place.” He dials all the knobs up to ten. Now it’s Sean’s speaker that starts hissing and feeding back. “Okay, we’re going to play one of the easiest rock songs in the world: ‘Paranoid’ by Black Sabbath.”

“Cool,” I say. “We know that song. We’ve done it on Rock Band.”

“Good. Then you know the timing.” Dad grabs the microphone stand and drags it over to Sean. “You’re going to be our lead singer.”

Sean recoils. “What? Me? No!”

“What? You? Yes!” Dad says. “You’ve got the girliest voice. It’s perfect.”

Me, Matt, and Valerie laugh.

“I don’t have a girly voice,” Sean squeaks.

“Did I say girly?” Dad coughs into his hand. “I meant musical. Don’t worry. You’ll be great. Besides, the lead singer’s the front man. He gets the lion’s share of the muttonchops.”

Sean ponders this a moment. Then shrugs. “Fine. I’ll give it a shot. But don’t blame me if I’m not any good.”

“You don’t have to be good,” Dad says. “You just have to be loud. Now, the most important thing to remember is to bring the energy. Rock is all about passion. You want to play straight from your lamb fries.” He sniffs loudly. “Okay. The chords are simple. It’s E minor, D, G, D, E minor. Over and over again. I’ll start us off.”

Dad does a colossally loud pick drag and then rips up the intro.

Goddamn. He sounds really good. Way better than I expected. His guitar riff sends an excited chill skittering up my arms.

I look over at Sean and Matt. They seem impressed, too. Although Sean keeps glancing at his uncle’s amplifier to make sure it isn’t smoking.

Dad looks over at me. Then nods. I dive in with a driving drumbeat. It takes Sean a second to catch up, but he’s with us by the time he starts screaming out the lyrics.

Now, I won’t say that we sound great. Because we don’t. Even though Dad is totally dope on the guitar, Sean has a hard time playing and singing at the same time, and my drumming is anything but stellar.

But I will say that it beats the hell out of our last tune.

And when Dad tears into the guitar solo, his fingers flying up and down the fret board, I feel the tiniest glimmer of hope. Like, maybe, with his help, and if we practice every day, and if all the stars align . . . maybe we won’t get completely laughed off the stage come December.





“YOUR DAD’S A KICK-ASS GUITAR PLAYER,” Sean says as we trudge up the stairs toward our lockers.

“Yeah,” Matt adds. “I wish I could play that well.”